On October 2, 2012 Webshots was purchased by Threefold Photos (Narendra Rocherolle, Nick Wilder and Mike Sitrin) and rebranded as Smile by Webshots. That day Smile surreptitiously installed their new software on thousands of computers. Smile took over computers, removed access to photos, broke the url links to millions of photos posted on blogs and other websites.
On December 3 2012, millions of photos were deleted. Since most members had not been notified of the deletion, they only found out when they tried to logon to their Webshots account. Years and years of memories and special times were trashed that day.
Promised pro-rated refunds were not sent unless you knew to request one. And it took multiple attempts to get that accomplished.
In July 2013 they split Smile by Webshots into two apps: Smile for Mobile and Webshots Wallpaper for the PC. They are now auto-renewing Smile memberships and charging people for the desktop application - even those who never signed up for it.
The management team is inept and careless - People who agreed to transition their photos from Webshots to Smile are now discovering many of their photos were accidentally deleted.
The owners of Smile and Webshots would be called crooks anywhere outside the Silicon Valley bubble. They destroyed a legacy photo-sharing site to create a buggy, cloud-based photo storage app start-up so they could pocket investor funds.
You can find out more here:
http://smilebywebshotssucks.com/
and participate with others here: